Posted on by mwhybark

Flotsam

Someone highlighted a long list of the MetFilter threads on Katrina, and someone else added the comprehensive, longer list (ninety-three and counting) to the MeFi wiki.

Meanwhile, AZ links to two interesting New York Observer pieces on, respectively, how the Times-Picayune managed to do such a gripping job of covering the disaster (apparently, the blog post on the NOLA blog concerning the broken levee was in fact the T-P breaking the news) and on the remarkable media meltdowns that have marked the televised coverage.

Posted on by mwhybark

…One More Thing

In light of recent developments, I can reveal this about tomorrow’s Apple hoopla: if it’s the iPhone, i’m iNterested. If it’s what it probably will be, a sub-gig iTunes phone with no embedded PDA or OS, I won’t even look at it. The only bright spot in the rumor mill to date have been the tales of ramped-up production on 2GB mindrives.

Posted on by mwhybark

Walking out of New Orleans

Bart has linked to his neighbor Michael Homan’s blog post about his experiences getting out of New Orleans over the past few days.

They promised they would take us to Baton Rouge, and from there it would be relatively easy for me to get a cab or bus and meet the family in Jackson.

But then everything went to hell. They instead locked up the truck and drove us to the refugee camp on I-10 and Causeway and dropped us off. Many refused to get out of the van but they were forced. The van drove away as quickly as it could, as the drivers appeared to be terrified, and we were suddenly in the middle of 20,000 people.


He goes on to detail how it is that he “escaped” this refugee collection point; his account implies that the people on the freeway were being guarded, just as in the 1927 flood.

Posted on by mwhybark

Not Dead Yet

A few folks have corresponded with me via email about this, but I feel like I should address it here as well.

This was originally posted to Siffblog; I try to crosspost here as well.

Tablet has announced that the current issue, #103, will be the final edition of the magazine. While Siffblog has been affiliated with Tablet, I have used only my own resources to create and host the blog; therefore, I see no reason that Siffblog should cease operations.

However, I have been thinking about what the best route forward for the blog is. An informal relationship with one or more paper-based local publications would be mutually beneficial to all parties, I believe, publishers, publicists, film freaks, and film writers included.

I also would like to strengthen or formalize this blog’s ties to existing local film arts organizations. In an ideal world, this site would publish updated schedules and times for all of these organizations at no cost to them in order to expand online information resources about small-audience film.

In short, I have some thinking to do, which will produce some work for me. Sometime in the next month, I probably will do a site redesign – as simple as possible, mind you, as we’re currently househunting and that is really time consuming. After that, I will probably have a decent plan in place for the blog. For now, though, dear contributors, please do not fret: the Siffblog abides, man, the Siffblog abides.

Please continue doing what you’ve done to the place. It really helps to pull it all together.

P. S. Perhaps now it’s time to have a Siffblog party – slash – wake for Tablet?

Posted on by mwhybark

Independence

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

–That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

— The Declaration of Independence, 1776.

You know what? I’m pissed. I mean, really! Not like insurrectionist-type pissed, but the situation on the Gulf Coast can’t possibly be seen as anything less than a failure to meet the responsibilities assigned above under the very most basic covenants of our country.

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Wash day

Taking a break from doing laundry, I noticed that one P. J. Murhpy of Wexford, Ireland had posted his chord transcription for Lousiana, 1927. I can finally scratch an itch I have had for several days.

I wonder if Mr. Murphy is any relation to celebrated Father Murphy of song and story?

At New Orleans as the storm was passing

Oe’r drying streets of an emptied town

Fed’ral neglect sent the waters crashing

and brought the choppers from far and near

Then Mayor Nagin of the Old Ninth Ward

Broke down in tears with a warning cry

“Goddamn I’m pissed” came the raging curses

And stunned the nation from shore to shore.



Huh, that was too damn easy. I suppose I should point out that the link above is to Boulavogue, a song which celebrates the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and that the doggerel immediately preceding this paragraph is, I suppose, a filk version. Here are some lines from the traditional version that are of interest:

Look out for hirelings, King George of England,

Search ev’ry kingdom where breathes a slave,

For Father Murphy of the County Wexford

Sweeps o’er the land like a mighty wave.

…

Ah, Father Murphy, had aid come over

The green flag floated from shore to shore!

I’ve played Boulavogue for six or seven years, and to my embarrassment have never really looked into the history of the events recounted. Reading through the Wikipedia link, I note with interest that the heart of the rebellion’s threat to the Crown was the “unprecedented ‘unholy union'” of Irish Presbyterians and Catholics, common cause across cultural and class barriers to resist and roll back the power of King George. Of further interest is the record of two landings in Ireland by French forces. In the United States, the primary locale where French and Irish culture have rubbed up against one another for generations is clearly New Orleans.

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Helicopters

Five years ago, helicopters hovered over my neighborhood for a week, night and day. At first, they were a novelty, of interest to me because of my love of flying and flight technology.

Then, they became a signpost in the sky – I could find whatever absurd police/protester/neighborhood interaction was taking place by looking for the choppers.

Finally, after, oh, about five or so days of the increasingly oppressive noise, I began to wish that the whirlybirds would just go away.

I took to raising my arm, sighting down it, and pretending that I was firing a gun at the damnable things. I joked about it, but in my secret heart, I wished that my arm was a firearm.

Posted on by mwhybark

A Miscellany

ITEM: Both Matt and Bart have updates. The Royal Pendletons are playing a gig this evening in Memphis, which seems a perfectly sensible way to deal with the fate of the band’s city. Bart and company are safely ensconced in a rainy Bloomington.

ITEM: Having nothing at all to do with the topic du jour, high school co-conspirator and Gulf War One Navy vet Wes Burton called me tonight to let me know that other high school co-conspirator Therron Thomas has gotten word that he’s being deployed to Iraq. Therron’s a 20-year full-timer in the National Guard, devoting most of his time to work as a training sergeant, so while he might prefer that things were otherwise, I’m certain he’ll be as well prepared for his tour as anyone possibly can be. Wes and I will be working together on some care packages for the Sergeant and his men.

ITEM: Returning to the knee-deep topic at hand, I hadn’t been able to mention that that Times-Picayune blog has some really quite wonderful writing, if occasionally, um, overboard. I was savoring one particular piece, about a boat tour of a flooded neighborhood, when an interesting recycling of Thomas Pynchon actually caused me to burst out laughing, probably not an intended reaction.

And then a screaming came across the water. To his right, Parks saw a woman gesticulating wildly from a second floor balcony at her home. Parks, a captain of sport fishing boats and offshore supply vessels who works out of Gulfport, Miss., navigated closer.

ITEM: I have a persistent case of half-remembered songs about New Orleans rising in concert with the waters, lapping at the sandbags of my mind. Under it all runs a funereal, no lyrics, brass-band version of St. James Infirmary. Up front, Tom Waits (I Wish I Was in New Orleans) and Randy Newman (Lousiana 1927) are duking it out for time at the piano, elaborately filigreed chords overlapping and changing the dominant lyric at the moment of harmonic convergence, while in the background Arlo Guthrie (The City of New Orleans) warbles about a train ride. Professor Longhair and/or The Dixie Cups (Big Chief, Iko Iko) sort of amusedly fight to keep sliptime with the martial drums from Jimmy Driftwood’s The Battle of New Orleans (caution: embedded quicktime) behind the whole toxic soup of sonic residue. I’m sure the stew will grow more dense over the next couple weeks.

ITEM: Will someone please draft a note to the TV people that the omnious martial symphony crap is the wrongest music possible for a Gulf Coast hurricane and flood? See above.

ITEM: Finally for the night, I wanted to mention that I won’t be able to follow the course of the flood as closely as I have been due to some time commitments tomorrow that will likely carry through until Sunday, probably far enough in the future that much of the uncertainty surrounding events in the Crescent City will be resolved.

Posted on by mwhybark

Water's rising

The Times-Picayune bloggers are packing up and leaving. The tuesday edition of the paper is available as a PDF here. This is in the wake of overnight news of a breach in the 17th Street Canal levee, which may be allowing Lake Ponchartrain into the streets. Blogger Brendan Loy, with help, has been blogging the hell out of national and local coverage and is likely to be my main resource for a while; he had a bandwidth-exceeded outage yesterday and notes that he has a backup site here.

The New York Times has a map that includes levee locations but possibly insufficient detail for us furriners to really work out what’s happening; the map was prepared late yesterday before this breach was reported.


050830 Nat Storm